Membership Benefits

Joining LONAP can provide your organisation with both financial and technical benefits. We have outlined some examples of the reasons why our members have told they have joined LONAP:

Reduction in Transit bandwidth usage

LONAP facilitates its members exchanging traffic with other LONAP members, reducing the amount of traffic you need to send through your upstream provider, and thus reducing the costs of your transit.

Improved speed of access

LONAP provides connections of up to 10 Gbps to its members, with a fast switch fabric and inter-site links to ensure your speed of connection to your peers at LONAP will remain fast giving your customers and users a better experience in terms of connectivity. We use Cisco Catalyst 6506 chassis switches with Supervisor 720 Engines, each loaded with a mix of 10Gbps blades, 24-port SFP cards for fibre connections, and 48-port copper 10/100/1000 cards at each of our core sites. This represents a significant investment to ensure our capability to deliver the best connections. We use smaller Cisco Catalyst configurations at expansion sites and will upgrade sites as demand in terms of members and bandwidth requires.

Reduced latency

Members are able to keep traffic local by exchanging it closer to to the source or destination of the traffic, rather than sending via upstream providers which may prefer routes learnt further away. This means that the time it takes for a data packet to reach its destination is reduced. This is particularly important for latency sensitive applications such as online gaming, but affects even web browsing and the time it takes for images to load on a web page. By peering with other networks at LONAP you may be shortening the route of a packet by several thousand miles, and up to a dozen routers which all add delays.

Improved availability

By being a member of LONAP you provide yourself with additional routes to sites hosted on networks connected or transiting via LONAP, in particular UK based sites, thereby increasing the resilience of your connectivity into the UK infrastructure. The LONAP equipment is monitored and maintained 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and so provides a reliable peering point.

Technical knowledge

For those ISPs who are unfamiliar with BGP and multi-homed routing LONAP provides an excellent ground for learning. Our mailing lists and events are an excellent source of information, knowledge and wisdom from numerous ISPs around the country who are more than willing to share their experiences. You will find members will be happy to provide sample configurations and even help you debug any technical issues.

Networking

LONAP is an organisation whose membership is mainly Internet Service Providers as well as content providers who run their own data networks. This means that it is an excellent chance for members to get to know each other, and use the opportunity to make new contacts, including finding potential suppliers.

Independence & Stability

Because of our structure as a member-owned company, we are an independent organisation not owned by an investor or any single member. All our switching infrastructure in each site is housed in cabinets dedicated exclusively for LONAP use and sourced directly from each datacentre operator. This ensures that only authorised LONAP staff and contractors have access to our infrastructure. We have been operating since 1997 without debts and with a growing but stable membership.

Getting involved

Many LONAP members believe that being involved in an organisation such as LONAP is reason enough. We are a not-for-profit company with the aim of promoting the benefit of our members. This means we can often provide a medium for raising issues, with common suppliers, potential suppliers, etc. As a member of LONAP you have a say in how it's run.